


I'll Be Yours

by Berettadetta



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Bernie's Anxiety Hour, F/M, I'm serious chapter 1 is the only non-explicit portion of this work, Rating will change, Winter Prom Shenanigans, it's all downhill from here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:07:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27816556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Berettadetta/pseuds/Berettadetta
Summary: Bernadetta tries to overcome her anxiety and fails spectacularly, thankfully she has a handsome jock friend to help her when she's down
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

Her dress was too short, Bernadetta decided. No, no it was her makeup. It was smearing, on too thick, the colors didn’t match her dress, her foundation was too light, lipstick too dark, and she looked like a goth clown, even more so than either of the resident goth clowns that filled out her cohort.

_They’re confident enough to pull it off. You aren’t. You look like a moron and everyone knows it. You need to leave immediately. If you leave right now you_ might _have a chance to save some face. It’s not like anyone was expecting-_

“Hey! I can’t believe you actually came!”

She perked up at the friendly call. Sylvain had managed to immediately spot her and was already making his way through the mass of students to meet his friend. A wave of something washed over here, probably shame. Of course Sylvain would have been the one to immediately notice her.

_Stupid, nice Sylvain who made his stupid attempts to reach out to her through letters slipped under her door and encouraged her to finish this stupid dress because he is a MONSTER who wants to see her SUFFER through three hours of a packed ballroom and polite socialization._

“Yeah, me neither,” She said softly, a nervous hand instinctively shooting up to play with her hair. “Guess I’m just... Trying to put myself out there more?”

“Great! Awesome! Cool! It’s great you’re here, Bernadetta! And, uh, if you need anyone to talk to, me and the boys are hanging out by the orchestra.” Sylvain said, pointing to Ingrid and Felix, both of whom seemed to want to be there even less than she did.

“I uh, think I’ll probably just stay by the snack table. You know I’m not big on,” she made a vague hand gesture towards the largest crowd. “This kinda thing.”

“Yeah, I get it! You’re not all that social. And there’s a lot of people here. It’s cool you came! I think that’s cool!”

Bernadetta squinted. Sylvain seemed off. Normally he was more focused, or at least more suave. He was probably trying to check her off his list. It wasn’t like him to be this repetitive. Or stilted. She nodded and tried to smile, “Well, I’ll let you go. I’m sure there’s a bunch of girls waiting for me to get out of your hair.”

“Wait! Before you go I just wanna say you uh. You look really good. I like your dress. It suits you. Very purple- no. Uh, the beading is super pretty.” He said, bringing his hand up to the back of his neck.

“Ah, uh. Thanks! I uh, made it myself, it’s not that great, I couldn’t get the lining to lay right and it’s got this weird bump in the hip and I totally didn’t give the boning channels in the corset enough reinforcements so it’s probably gonna fall apart and It’s a bit of a complete mess if you look hard enough and I just realized I’m talking way too much about this and you don’t care but thanks for saying I look nice you’re also really cute and you should go dance with that girl that’s been staring at you since you started talking to me.”

Sylvain blinked, then grinned. “I’m not entirely sure if I should tell you that no one can tell and your dress is beautiful or be impressed you managed to say all that without taking a breath.”

“Thanks, it’s because of the panic attacks!” She said with a laugh that barely hid the fact she wasn’t joking.

He raised an eyebrow, though his grin didn’t fade, “It’s still impressive, I think.”

She continued to laugh nervously. “Well. Uh, that girl is still looking at you. Better go do your… Sylvain-y charm on her and make her night.”

The look on his face darkened slightly. “She can wait. You’re taking a really big step tonight, just by showing up. I’m proud of you, Bernadetta. Everyone else is, too.” He said with a soft, genuine smile.

Her inner monologue worked overtime to distract from the fact that everything but the two of them seemed to melt away with his compliment and smile (both of which were committed to her memory for pure, church-sponsored reasons).

“Thank you, Sylvain. I hope I don’t let you all down.”

“Don’t think of it like that.” He shook his head, “You already made m- everyone proud, just by being here. It doesn’t matter how long you stay, or if you talk to anyone else. Just showing up is good enough.” He insisted.

The music trailed off into a distant hum. Faintly, she realized that this was the most comfortable in a packed room she had ever been. The feeling couldn’t last, and she knew that. Shifting her weight onto her other foot, she willed herself to look anywhere but at Sylvain.

“I’ll… try. Thank you.” She stuttered, praying to any goddess that might be listening to either smite her down or ensure the crowd of party guests would actually disappear. She wasn’t picky at this point. 

He smiled and winked, “Good girl. Have fun!”

The guests and room snapped back into a painful focus as Sylvain turned around and waved at the woman she pointed out. She barely had time to register his words (only memorized for the most wholesome of activities). She shook her head slightly, and made her way to the impressive spread of sweets. 

* * *

Bernadetta lasted six minutes before the walls started collapsing, the talk turned into a cacophony of whispered insults and snickers that proved every negative thought she’d had about herself. Any familiar face she could have picked out melted into an amorphous crowd poised to attack, mock, humiliate her. They had had all seen her stand in the middle of the hall and giggle like an idiot in front of a man who could barely remember her name. They heard her babble nonsensically about her dress and if they weren’t aware of the glaring flaws in the garment before, they were now.

If she could leave casually enough, the mob might turn its ire to another unfortunate guest.

She slipped out of the reception hall as the orchestra began to play another piece. The deserted courtyard was a small mercy, and she ducked into the Eagles classroom, her legs were not going to carry her to her dorm.

A few minutes to catch her breath and she could be off to her room. She welcomed the freezing stone against her boiling skin, and she let her eyes squeeze shut as she began to breathe rhythmically in a pattern Petra had sworn worked wonders for her when she was held captive.

She had almost regained the use of her legs as a terribly familiar voice echoed through the empty classroom.

“Bernadetta? Are you okay? What happened?”

_Fuck.  
_


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is bonding, and kissing, and a 2009-era Taylor Swift song is mandated to be playing in your head while reading.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” Bernadetta whimpered. She backed herself up against the bookcase, trying to make herself as small as possible against the corner. 

Sylvain seemed to understand and put his palms up. He backed away and around one of the tables, no longer blocking the only exit, “No… But neither are you, Bernadetta.”

“I’m allowed to leave! They can’t force me to stay! You even said I could go whenever I wanted to! So I left!” She yelled. 

“That’s true, and I’m not asking you to come back,” He said softly, “But I am asking if there was anyone who made you leave, and why you didn’t go to your room.”

She refused to look him in the eye. 

_This is a setup, don’t try and engage with him. Start crying. Scare him off. Make him regret staying. Make him regret finding you._

“Bernadetta, did someone make you feel like this?” He asked, gentle in tone but firm in its intent. 

She wailed into her hands and turned to face him, focusing her gaze on the chandelier above the back of the room, “No! No it’s never anyone else! It’s ALWAYS me! I am the problem! I’m bad and I look terrible and everyone is laughing and my makeup is running and there’s too many people and I’m tight and my skin is on fire and people know it’s on fire and my clothes hurt and my hair hurts and my makeup hurts and my chest hurts and it’s all so BAD and I can’t handle-“

“Hey, Bernadetta?” he cooed like he was trying to calm a fussy horse.

She stopped her rant mid-word, prepared to launch back into a larger tirade about why she was an embarrassment to her family and their prospects of having a daughter who was respectable enough to wed until Sylvain pointed at her bodice.

“How’d you make that?”

The sudden change of subject threw her out of her spiral. 

_“Huh?”_

“I don’t know how people put all those little beads on. How do you do it? Like, do you thread them all individually and sew them on like that or?” He asked with a genuine curiosity in his voice. “The patterns are really intricate. Seems like there’s a trick to it that I don’t know.”

“… I- uh, y-yeah that’s not. Totally how they do it. I have a bowl with a dowel in the middle and you can, spin the bowl so it lines up the bead holes with a curved needle..” She mimicked the motion of catching the beads on a hook, “And they get sewn on in lines.”

“Sounds like it would get boring.”

“It’s not as fun if you don’t have someone to talk to. Dorothea has been visiting my room, it’s been nice to have some company while I work.”

Sylvain grinned at the mention of another person, “You mean you’re actually letting other people into your room now?”

“Shut up! She can set you on fire if you make fun of me!”

“At this point you’d almost be willing to dance with someone.”

“Stoooooop!”

The pair laughed at the situation as Sylvain asked her more questions about her dress - one of her most ambitious projects, and one she was extremely proud of before her panic attack had set in - and her thoughts on the diversity of snacks the church had brought to the dance - acceptable, but she wished there was more variety as a reward for braving the crowds. Questions became less frequent as the conversation came easier to Bernadetta, the comfortable silences were longer. Most importantly, she was finding herself comfortable around Sylvain. 

Which was highly suspicious, and all but confirmed her theory that he had a hidden agenda for talking to her. 

“Okay,” she said, a note of suspicion replacing the lilt of a giggle that tinged her speech, “So, be honest with me. Who set you up to this? When are you gonna ask me out and laugh in my face? Where’s everyone else?”

“Bernadetta, the Venn diagram of people at this monastery who love you and people who would find any reason to castrate me is a circle. I swear that I honestly have no ulterior motives. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” 

Bernadetta snorted and looked up at him. He seemed sincere, she thought, and he was completely right about the students and faculty who would take any excuse to beat him up. Not that facts and logic would penetrate the intense internal monologue telling her to run away from him and hide in the nearest bush. 

“Well, I’m okay. You fixed me. I’m breathing normally and I’ll uh- go back to my room. Thanks for checking in on me. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.” 

“I wasn’t kidding about that dance, Bernadetta.” Sylvain said quietly as he extended a hand. 

_He’s playing a prank on you just run your dorm is one hundred and fifty feet away he is DANGEROUS you need to RUN-_

She hesitantly took his hand and stood up. 

_Oh no._

“Sorry I’m a bit- a lot. Rusty on ballroom dances.” She admitted sheepishly. 

“Eh, no one can see us. Just put your hands on my shoulders,” He gently guided her arms to rest on his collar. “And- ah, can I put my hands on your back?”

_No you may not we are GOING HOME NOW what the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Your father is going to see and he’s going to-_

“I’d like that, I think.”

Sylvain smiled and placed his hands on her back, gently pressing her closer to him as music floated across the courtyard and into the empty classroom. She tucked her head under his chin. He smelled like unfamiliar nature; sharp, sweet, and clean mixed with something she couldn’t even begin to identify but absolutely fascinated her. As she shifted her face to lay more comfortably against his collar, she made a mental note to figure out what he was wearing. 

The dance was less of a formal, performative execution of memorized steps and more of an excuse to hug the other. Bernadetta appreciated the turn from tradition until she realized just how close they were. She could feel the soft fabric of his jacket contrasted with the stiff, scratchy material of his pant leg brushing against her exposed leg. Had she not already been in a mix of sensory overload and general emotional overload, she would have complained, or shifted away. Instead, she continued to mirror the slight movements of his hips in time with the orchestra’s piece. 

As the music swelled, she found herself still stiff in his arms. Despite the endless warmth from her friend and the perfume that was making her seriously consider stealing his laundry, she was still far from comfortable. Sylvain seemed to notice, as well, and pulled away, just slightly enough to let her look up at him if she wanted to. 

“You don’t have anyone to prove yourself to. Just breathe, ‘Detta.” He whispered, practically a breath against her ear that made her shudder. 

Bernadetta lifted her head up slowly from his chest. This had been nice of him. Nice of her friend to take pity on her and offer her a dance, after calming her down from a panic attack, after he asked her about another one of her projects, seemed to actually care about said project. 

_Which is just what FRIENDS do, Bernie. He’s pitying you. It's time to end this and let him get back to the party.  
_

She steeled herself and turned her eyes to her partner and _dammit,_ she should not have looked at his face.

_Stupid, soft eyes and a stupid, soft smile with stupid, soft looking lips that betrayed a genuine happiness._ As he noticed her head tilt, the hand on her upper back rose up her spine to rest at the base of her skull.

... And then that bastard swiped his thumb from her jaw to a spot under her ear that made her melt into him. He kept smiling softly, she hadn’t noticed that the lighting had shifted and that his face was now a little bit darker.

She didn’t have time to process why she was dropping her shields, or why such a banal spot could elicit such a reaction when pressed, or even what the consequences of what happened next. She was no longer driven by self preservation instincts or misanthropic desires as a person she didn’t recognize took control of her body.

“Oh no,” she whispered, barely audible even in the near silence of the classroom. “I’m going to kiss you.”

“I’d like that, you should kiss me.”

Sylvain is, from a technical standpoint, an excellent kisser. It’s a learning curve from the fantasies she held since she was a child, practice kissing lumpy pillows had done nothing to prepare her for any of this. 

The teeth are a more immediate issue than she assumed, they never factored into her practice. Her hands didn’t know where to go and settled awkwardly on his shoulders. Neither of them cared. She assumed his lips would be less soft but they’re almost slimy, if she were feeling up to criticizing her entirely too attractive friend who had just decided to move a hand to tangle in her hair.

Their kiss ended with a small whimper and a larger, much less seductive pop. 

“Oh no!” She exclaimed, unable to stifle the grin blooming across her face. 

“That’s not the worst thing a girl has ever said after kissing me.” He replied, the light blush she thought might have been a trick of the light had deepened and spread down to his neck. He was far from composed, a look she had never seen on him before but suited him very well. 

It made her heart swell with a wave of affection that almost drowned out her fears. Fears that obfuscated what was, in hindsight, foreshadowing so obvious that had it been written into one of her novels she would have rewritten the entire character arc. Swirling, painfully clear memories began to rewrite themselves. 

Volunteering to help her with lance training the moment she mentioned bow knight certifications and how he asked before he touched her to fix her form. The way he immediately caught onto her dislike of face to face communication and wrote her novels worth of letters about nothing even when she didn’t respond for a month and a half. The looks he gave her when he thought she was distracted that she thought were a part of a secret plan to somehow bully her.

His strange, stilted conversation in the reception hall because he thought she was _pretty_ and he wanted to _dance_ with _her-_

Her inner monologue went into a frenzy. The conspiracy theories she could create at lightning fast speeds could find no ground, not for lack of trying. Somehow the most unimaginable scenario, that Sylvain Jose Gautier: unabashed chauvinist and Known Extrovert, might have feelings for her, Bernadetta von Varley: anxiety riddled misanthropic nerd.

… And she might return those feelings.

The realization hit her hard enough for her brain’s filter to shut down long enough for her to squeak out “I’m going to kiss you again!”

Sylvain laughed, light and genuine. “We should get into a better position, then.” He said, a hint of something Bernadetta would later be able to identify as “barely contained lust” coloring his words. 

She didn’t have time to wonder in the moment, as Sylvain was brutally efficient in slamming her against the freezing stone, hand already behind her head to cushion any accidental injury. It slowly turned into a fist in her hair that guided her gaze to his. “Put your legs around my waist, I won’t let you fall.”

She complied only after threading one of her hands into his soft (so, so soft), fluffy hair in return. A small jolt of something, probably pleasure, shot through her as she realized that Sylvain was effectively holding her up with one arm with ease. He grinned, the pure, chaste affection of his gaze had been replaced with something significantly more predatory. More bolts of excitement-pleasure-fear coursed through her body as he gripped her outer thigh. 

“So, if I’m remembering correctly, it was _‘one hand tightly gripping her hair, as if to lead her mouth while the other slid inside her stay?’”_

Bernadetta felt her soul exit her body. Her mouth went dry. The running mantra of self loathing quieted to a dull, sustained scream that was easier to block out with the small whines escaping from a long-repressed part of herself. 

“Oh _, no_.” She murmured, trying and failing to disguise her utter, albeit shy and slightly embarrassed, delight. “How dare you use my writing against me?”

“Without remorse, apparently.” He purred before closing the gap between them again. 

True to his terrible word, Sylvain’s grip in her hair tightened. The wall and her legs wrapped around his hips were enough to support Bernadetta’s small frame, a realization not lost on either of them. His now free hand immediately went to her chest, working its way in between her corset and settling on her breast, earning a chirp of surprise for his efforts. 

Surprised chirps that devolved into excited squeaks when she felt his tongue slide into her mouth. Her nails dug into his shoulder a little too harshly as she tried to respond in kind. Vague thoughts of writing on what to actually do with her tongue tried to surface in her mind but nothing seemed better than letting it slide against his and running the tip across his teeth. 

Sylvain broke their kiss long enough to readjust his position and suddenly Bernadetta became painfully aware of something very hard pressed against her inner thigh. The small, surprised moan of realization was muffled by the tongue that immediately began to work its way back into her mouth. Unsure if she was trying to tease him or work to relieve herself of the building tension deep in her stomach, Bernadetta bucked her hips against his crotch. She whined in a now more familiar mix of lust and embarrassment.

“Hah- _Fuck_.” He hissed into her ear, a little too loud for either of their comfort levels, “We need to go somewhere else. Like, now.”

“Y-yeah..” she mumbled, still dizzy from the sheer amount of emotions that cycled rapidly through her brain. 

Sylvain helped her lower herself down from her place against the wall. A wall that she would no longer be able to look at. A wall that she had to look at every day due to a careful system of bribes from her professors and friends to trick her into attending class. 

_Fantastic, Bernie._

“So, where do you want to go?” He asked with a hint of flirtiness, beginning to regain a little control over the situation. His thumb returned to its path from the junction of her jaw to the soft spot under her ear. 

“W-would you… Ugh..” She swallowed hard. Being a passive actor was so much easier than taking initiative. Or speaking. That was tough for her at the best of times, let alone asking her friend (Sylvain, her brain, now beginning to recover from its shutdown, helpfully reminded her) to come to her room. 

Sylvain seemed to notice her discomfort and pressed her closer to his chest, “It’s okay if you don’t-“

_“-Myroomdoyouwannacomemaybe.”_ She blurted out as quickly as she could, as if any hesitation would make her reconsider her decision. 

“Ye- yeah that sounds. Great. Let’s do that. Now.”


End file.
